House Bill 1- Senators Celia Bolinger and Emily Albrecht
Pros
Cons
Standardized testing has not improved student achievement
Standardized tests are an unreliable measure of student performance
Standardized tests are unfair and discriminatory against non English speakers and students with special needs
Teahers wont have to waste time teaching to the test.
**
*
China has along tradition of standardized testing and leads the world in educational achievement.
Standardized tests are not narrowing the curriculum, rather they are focusing it on important basic skills all students need to master.
*
Notes from Google Drive:
House Bill 1 - Eliminate Standardized Testing
Pros
Cons
Will make students less stressed.
Students will not be prepared to take college entrance exams.
This will allow for more devotion to the main items of curriculum and not standardized testing.
Teachers and staff will not be able to tell if students have learned the right material that year.
save the schools money to put towards other things
Students will have less self confidence with their grades.
Test do not really reveal the strengths of a student because they are under pressure.
Standardized tests may reveal who really has been learning the most during the year.
Not a requirement for grade level promotions.
Shows the consistent improvement of the schools within the different districts.
Different school districts know more about certain things about a variety of writing assessments.
It can show if teachers are really teaching the correct material.
Timed writing and no resources are unlike most real writing situations, therefore an inaccurate way to show skills.
Much more difficult for colleges and universities to evaluate students for scholarships.
These tests can be unfair to those with disabilities or special needs.
Students may not care as much about schoolwork and understanding their work because there isn’t a big standardized test to prepare for.
Some individuals aren’t good at test taking and still well knowledged
Students may not care as much about schoolwork if there is not a big test like the NJASK to prepare for.
There will not be as direct of a source of the average test grade.
Teachers will not have to teach about the test and will be able to teach more of what students need to be learning.
Even though Finland, a country that do not take standardized tests, excels in international tests, they may have a different academic curriculum than other countries.
As the United States focuses more on using tests as a means of holding educators and school districts accountable.
Physicians, lawyers, real estate brokers and pilots have to take standardized test to ensure the necessary knowledge for the profession
The U.S schools tend to rank middle on standardized testing compared to other countries
Standardized tests are an unreliable source of student performance.
Teaching time is being consumed by preparation for the test.
Grading on open-ended questions are unfair.
Despite lack of practice for standardized tests, when Finnish students do take standardized exams, they tend to excel
(Mrs. Espo) Heard this today on the news: from a hiring manager at Google:
In a New York Times interview on “How to get a job at Google,” Bock said, shockingly, that “GPAs are worthless as a criteria for hiring, and test scores are worthless. … We found that they don’t predict anything.”
(Mrs. Espo) Here’s another article I found this morning in the Wall Street journal. Has both pros and cons. Another good source. if you don’t get the full article from the link, just Google:
Students will all be tested differently so some may have it much easier than others
Debate.org
standardized tests are not a good measure of learning and there is way too much reliance on test results in education today. Some students are simply not good test takers, and taking standardized tests on just one or two days may not accurately measure what a student knows. A student can work hard and get good grades but still perform poorly on standardized tests, so there can be a big discrepancy between the scores and a student's grades.
Standardized tests are important. They measure how are children are doing compared to other children the same age. They measure how our districts are doing compared to other districts. They measure how our state is doing compared to other states. Standardized tests are the only thing we have to measure student learning.
From the Wall street Journal article
standardized exams zap the creativity out of teaching and turn schools into test factories.
Proponents say tests are necessary to gauge how students are performing, hold educators accountable and guide instruction.
Five national groups launched the "Testing Resistance & Reform Spring 2014" a week ago to provide a template for parents to stage local protests, opt children out of standardized exams and win state policy changes.
adding the results let parents see how their children stack up against others statewide.
But opponents, such as Cassie Creswell, see it differently. She said she transferred her daughter to a private school from a Chicago public school because she felt the second-grader was spending too much time being assessed. "These public schools are becoming glorified test prep, and I did not want to subject my child to that," said Ms. Creswell, who has kept her younger daughter at the public preschool.
standardized tests are an unreliable measure of student performance. A 2001 study published by the Brookings Institution found that 50-80% of year-over-year test score improvements were temporary and "caused by fluctuations that had nothing to do with long-term changes in learning.
Standardized tests are unfair and discriminatory against non English speakers and students with special needs.[106] English language learners take tests in English before they have mastered the language. [101] Special education students take the same tests as other children, receiving few of the accommodations usually provided to them as part of their Individualized Education Plans
tandardized tests measure only a small portion of what makes education meaningful.According to late education researcher Gerald W. Bracey, PhD, qualities that standardized tests cannot measure include "creativity, critical thinking, resilience, motivation, persistence, curiosity, endurance, reliability, enthusiasm, empathy, self-awareness, self-discipline, leadership, civic-mindedness, courage, compassion, resourcefulness, sense of beauty, sense of wonder, honesty, integrity.
Physicians, lawyers, real-estate brokers and pilots all take high-stakes standardized tests to ensure they have the necessary knowledge for their professions.[23] If standardized tests were an unreliable source of data, their use would not be so widespread.
Teaching to the test" is replacing good teaching practices with "drill n' kill" rote learning.A five-year University of Maryland study completed in 2007 found "the pressure teachers were feeling to 'teach to the test'" since NCLB was leading to "declines in teaching higher-order thinking, in the amount of time spent on complex assignments, and in the actual amount of high cognitive content in the curriculum."
Instruction time is being consumed by monotonous test preparation. Some schools allocate more than a quarter of the year's instruction to test prep. [Kozol] After New York City's reading and math scores plunged in 2010, many schools imposed extra measures to avoid being shut down, including daily two and a half hour prep sessions and test practice on vacation days. [14] On Sep. 11, 2002, students at Monterey High School in Lubbock, TX, were prevented from discussing the first anniversary of the 2001 terrorist attacks because they were too busy with standardized test preparation.
Most parents approve of standardized tests. A June-July 2013 Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll found that 75% of parents say standardized tests "are a solid measure of their children's abilities" and 69% say the tests "are a good measure of the schools' quality." 93% of parents say standardized tests "should be used to identify areas where students need extra help" and 61% say their children "take an appropriate number of standardized tests." [2]
Standardized testing causes severe stress in younger students. According to education researcher Gregory J. Cizek, anecdotes abound "illustrating how testing... produces gripping anxiety in even the brightest students, and makes young children vomit or cry, or both." [7] On Mar. 14, 2002, the Sacramento Bee reported that "test-related jitters, especially among young students, are so common that the Stanford-9 exam comes with instructions on what to do with a test booklet in case a student vomits on it."
Testing is not too stressful for students.The US Department of Education stated: "Although testing may be stressful for some students, testing is a normal and expected way of assessing what students have learned." [19] A Nov. 2001 University of Arkansas study found that "the vast majority of students do not exhibit stress and have positive attitudes towards standardized testing programs." [5] Young students vomit at their desks for a variety of reasons, but only in rare cases is this the result of testing anxiety.
America is facing a "creativity crisis," as standardized testing and rote learning "dumb down" curricula and jeopardize the country's economic future. A 2010 College of William & Mary study found Americans' scores on the Torrance Test of Creative Thinking have been dropping since 1990, and researcher Kyung-Hee Kim lays part of the blame on the increase in standardized testing: "If we neglect creative students in school because of the structure and the testing movement... then they become underachievers
Finland topped the international education (PISA) rankings from 2001-2008, yet has "no external standardized tests used to rank students or schools,"according to Stanford University researchers Linda Darling-Hammond and Laura McCloskey. [148] Success has been achieved using "assessments that encourage students to be active learners who can find, analyze, and use information to solve problems in novel situations."
Using test scores to reward and punish teachers and schools encourages them to cheat the system for their own gain.[117] A 2011 USA Today investigation of six states and Washington DC found 1,610 suspicious anomalies in year-over-year test score gains.
- China has along tradition of standardized testing and leads the world in educational achievement.
- Standardized tests are not narrowing the curriculum, rather they are focusing it on important basic skills all students need to master.
*Notes from Google Drive:
House Bill 1 - Eliminate Standardized Testing
Heard this today on the news: from a hiring manager at Google:
In a New York Times interview on “How to get a job at Google,” Bock said, shockingly, that “GPAs are worthless as a criteria for hiring, and test scores are worthless. … We found that they don’t predict anything.”
Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2014/02/google-calls-these-talents-worthless/#XjeZOdRlkZgWvK24.99
Here’s another article I found this morning in the Wall Street journal. Has both pros and cons. Another good source.
if you don’t get the full article from the link, just Google:
States Look to Curb Standardized Testing
I will save the paper copy.
__http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304071004579411433293118344?mg=reno64-wsj&url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticle%2FSB10001424052702304071004579411433293118344.html__
From the Wall street Journal article
"These public schools are becoming glorified test prep, and I did not want to subject my child to that," said Ms. Creswell, who has kept her younger daughter at the public preschool.
From
http://standardizedtests.procon.org/